Thirty police officers will be assigned to guard Michelle Martin, the ex-wife
and accomplice of the Belgian paedophile killer Marc Dutroux, after the
country’s highest court freed her on parole.

On Tuesday night she left her Brussels prison cell either to serve the remaining 14 years of her 30-year sentence in a convent of the Poor Clare Sisters in Malonne, near the city of Namur.

Martin has been granted conditional early release after serving 16 years in jail as the accomplice of Dutroux, who kidnapped and raped six girls, murdering four of them in horrific circumstances during the 1990s.

Her complicity as a mother of young children in the crimes stunned Belgium especially because two eight-year-old girls, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, starved to death because she failed to tell the police, who had arrested Dutroux, that they were being held in a dungeon in a family house.

Martin, a former schoolteacher, who married Dutroux in 1983 and had three children by him before their divorce in 2003, had also served time in the 1980s for previous kidnappings

Her controversial release has sparked demands from Dutroux that he should be granted parole because he too is eligible for early release because his crimes were not covered by existing mandatory sentencing legislation that was changed after his conviction.

“He is convinced and believes that he too deserves a chance to rehabilitate himself. He does not know when but he continues to cultivate the hope of liberation,” said Ronny Baudewijn, his lawyer.

Jean-Denis Lejeune, the father of Julie, who appealed against Martin’s release, is to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights arguing that Dutroux’s victims should be able to block early release.

“I want to scream. For me, Michelle Martin is as much responsible for the death of my daughter as Dutroux. She is more dangerous than him.”

Martin has been accepted into the convent of Les Clarisses a Malonne where her 24-hour surveillance and protection has been estimated to cost over £95,000 a month, over 30 times the bill for keeping her in jail.

Thierry Moreau, Martin’s lawyer, said: “This decision is a recognition that we live in a constitutional state where the law is the same for all.”

Following mass protests in Malonne, police unions have said that dozens of full time officers will be responsible for guarding Martin, 52, and the convent to make sure that she does not escape and to protect her, and the nuns, from revenge attacks. She will also be entitled to claim over £400 a month in social security payments.

Virginie Dedieu was protesting outside the convent with her children Gabriel and Anucka as Martin arrived.

“She doesn’t even deserve hell and certainly not a beautiful, holy place like this,” she said.